MAINEVILLE, Ohio — Construction is underway at a popular Warren County restaurant months after a fire destroyed the kitchen.
Crews responded to a fire at the Monkey Bar & Grille around 12:30 a.m. on May 3. When they arrived, investigators said firefighters were met with heavy flames coming from the kitchen. The building is primarily steel and concrete, so operations manager Joey Santos said there was nowhere for the fire to escape.
“It was literally a hotbox in here,” Santos said.
He noted they’re grateful no one was hurt, but they do have a lot of repairs to make.
“The next step for us is to replace the roof because it got so hot in here that it damaged the roof a little bit so we want to replace the roof first. Then, once that’s done we can tackle rebuilding the kitchen,” he said.
Santos added they were blown away by the support the community showed them from raising money for their staff to cleaning up.
“We had a lot of smoke damage and heat that came this way and a lot of these pictures, picture frames they got damaged and some of these picture frames actually got restored by somebody in our community,” Santos said.
The fire forced them to close for a month as they cleaned up. Santos added the loss of their kitchen has impacted business.
“It’s impacted a little bit but you know for six years this business has been food trucks. We offer food through food trucks, so we had to just go back to that,” he said.
Santos added they've started to sell some appetizers like chips and salsa and chicken salad sandwiches.
Jim Touris has been coming to the Monkey Bar & Grille for seven years.
“It’s a good place to come after a hard day,” Touris said.
He said he hasn’t noticed a difference in the service or atmosphere since they lost their kitchen.
“It’s been kind of the same,” he said. “I think people come out here for the music and to sit on the deck.”
A new plan is in the works to bring back the full Monkey Bar & Grille menu.
“We took a 40-foot container and turned it into a kitchen. It’s going to be a mobile kitchen that we’re going to sit right there in the parking lot,” Santos said.
He hopes they’ll have it open by the end of October. Once the kitchen in the building has been renovated they plan to keep the mobile kitchen to help with pick up orders.
“We’ll be able to bring more items to our menu once this kitchen is fully restored,” he said.
It’s one of their new ideas to provide more food options for their customers. However, it’s not the only new idea that has risen from the ashes. Since the fire, they’ve started to host new events.
“We want to continue to offer opportunities for people,” Santos said.
One of the new events is the first-ever Monkey Market.
“In business when you go through some kind of a challenge or difficulty the way you come back you got to be creative, you got to innovate and we’re not afraid to innovate,” Santos said.
Several small local businesses set up tents in the parking lots. Some of the things they’re selling include books, clothes, pumpkins, and hats.
“We’ve had a lot of traffic down here,” said Steve Lutmer, owner of Highland Rail Farms. “It gets us out of our brick-and-mortar place — gives people access, you know, all in spot to really what’s available locally.”
Santos says these new events help bring more people in and expose them to businesses in the area.
“Our community came together to help us and participate in the restoration of this establishment. It was incredible. We’ll never forget it,” said Santos.
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